Rotary celebrates 60 years of Interact

KNYSNA NEWS - This month Rotary is celebrating a landmark anniversary for the international organisation.

Interact, Rotary's service arm for young people of high school age, is turning 60 years old this November.

The first Interact club was started by Rotary at a high school in Melbourne Beach in Florida, USA in 1962. Since then it has spread all over the world and there are more than 343 000 members of Interact at 15 000 clubs in 145 countries.

World Interact Day is celebrated on 5 November to commemorate the founding of the first Interact club.

The aim of Interact is to empower youth to serve their communities locally and develop leadership skills while practising teamwork. Interactors are also encouraged to make contact with clubs outside South Africa to promote goodwill and international understanding.

Interact clubs are sponsored by individual Rotary clubs, which provide mentorship and guidance, but they are self-governing and self-supporting. Club membership varies greatly. Clubs can be single-gender or mixed, large or small.

They can draw from the student body of a single school or from two or more schools in the same community.

The Rotarian team at the Training Day. From left: Herb Hunter, Elwin Thompson, Lee-Ann Govender, Heather Thomas, Viv Nightingale, Lesley Satchel and Butch Coetzee.

Interact in Knysna

Knysna has no less than seven fully functioning Interact clubs. The first Interact club in Knysna was started at Knysna Secondary School in 1989. Oakhill School's Interact club was chartered in 1995, followed shortly by Knysna High School also in 1995.

Percy Mdala High School chartered its club in 1999, Knysna Montessori School started in 2004 and Keurbosch School (formerly Heatherhill) in 2013. The newest club is at Concordia High School, chartered in 2014.

There are about 160 Interact members in total between the Knysna clubs.

These clubs with their active members and dedicated teachers are all supported by a team of Knysna Rotarians. The impact they have through their selected projects on our local communities is immense and cannot be underestimated.

Local Interact clubs help at retirement homes, preschools, soup kitchens and animal welfare, they clean our beaches and rivers and they help where homes have burnt down.

Some notable projects include Knysna Montessori cleaning up the town cemetery, Knysna Secondary painting their whole school when it looked shabby, Knysna High facilitating blood transfusion services at their school and Concordia Interactors acting as chairside assistants at Rotary Dent, an initiative that offers dental care to local children.

Says Knysna Rotary Youth Committee member, Lesley Satchel, "Knysna salutes all Interact presidents and members in our town who make our world better for others, and the Interact teachers at every school who guide and support them."

A breakaway session on the Training Day.